Well I am glad I didn’t whine to you, but glad I thought of doing so. You can think now either that things are O.K. or that I have learnt how to handle them. William has been wonderful.
I don’t really know what else to talk to you about besides Bob, we have been parted too long, and I reach you easiest through that deeply-cut channel. I know one can’t genuinely reach anyone through anything, though. So I had better continue with some scrap of news. John Lehmann, whom I don’t often see, has just been so nice to me and taken me to the Ballet. He showed me a very gay and exciting letter of yours about a book you were at, and about a book of Lincoln K (forget how the name finishes but like the man) which you had put him on to. Life here is very boring geographically—one can’t move about, or rather can only move with great trouble and arrangements with hotels; and one can’t, without even greater trouble, turn from a continental gadabout into a cosmic one. It is boring gastro-nomically also, and like our two pussies I am usually meat-hungry. Wine isn’t so bad, for I never drank much and now drink all I can, and that comes to the same. Do you remember the champagne dinner in an upper room on your birthday at Ostende? That was a strange visit. It crackles up most of it like burnt paper, but here and there a word stands out.
I see it is 1.00 A.M. I have been mowing the lawns and feel sleepy. Lovely lovely garden, and the wood, much of which I planted in the twenties, has turned this summer into a wild young man who no longer needs my help.
Oh, before I forget. Richard wrote me a kind and unexpected letter, telling me how you were, and what he thought you were feeling.41 I didn’t get a great deal out of it except the kindness, the much kindness. John Simpson I see as much as I can. And I have a new friend whom I like extremely—
Hsiao Chi’en is his name. He is studying myself and Virginia [Woolf] at Kings. And I also have a new girl acquaintance—her name is Hazel Earelly-Wilmot—who works in the Czechoslovak Institute. Thus, thus, do I avert the cosmic. If I realised that I was penned up, a Britisher, in Britain, I should “go mad.” Love to Gerald.
Love as always from
Morgan
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1946 Ivar Avenue
June 21st. [1943]
Hollywood 28. Calif.42
Dearest Morgan,
Your letter, dated June 7th, just arrived: nice and quick. I must write by return, while it’s “warm.” That’s what I did in answer to your last, but it sank with that clipper which foundered in Lisbon harbour, and tho I tried several times to communicate, the channel was somehow blocked, and I wrote stiff cold literary notes which I tore up. Today, however, it’s wide open. Gosh, that must have been awful for you about Bob. Thank heavens he finally didn’t go. I wish I was a real Yogi and could utter authoritative prophecies that he will die at the age of 101 in bed, though, actually, nothing would surprise me less. My experience, such as it is, all points to the fact that those who are always volunteering and plunging ahead tend to survive. As for Bob’s reasons—yes, they are good ones. But, among his friends, let him not forget Heinz. One can build arguments sky-high, and very firmly, but the foundations lie deeper. Heinz is really most of mine. I begin to know this more and more. It’s the old story of Sodom and G. Because everybody is Heinz to someone. The Gita says this is no argument, because
“Both he who thinks the Self to be the slayer, and he who thinks It to be slain, know nothing. It cannot slay, neither can It be slain.” But that, as you’d say, it too “Cosmic” for me at present. For Bob too, I guess.
Yes, my letter to John Lehmann was gay, and I am gay most of the time: but I also know quite well that this is a pleasant period, with a time-limit to it, during which I have to prepare some steel cables which won’t snap when strained. I honestly believe that I now believe in “God” (can’t explain what I mean by “God”) and that I rely on Him, and will turn to Him next time things get tough. But, of course, I have absolutely no way of being sure of this, or of what help I’d receive in, say, a crisis like yours; or of whether this belief of mine mightn’t go away just as mysteriously as it came. If you can fall out of love you can fall out of faith (but can you fall out of love?) or anyhow, William James says so.
Swami is away just now: one of his brother-monks got sick in the East and he won’t be back till mid-July. I do the ritual worship most days, which is probably familiar to you: the flowers, the brass bowls, and incense, and candles and perfume and bell. And the Sanskrit mantrams. I think of you very often while I am doing it—you especially, because everything Indian suggests you to me—and sometimes I talk to the Lord about you.
Sometimes you and Bob are sniggering in the background, because of the pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 113
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wrap I’m wearing, and the flower on the top of my head. “Look at Chris in drag!” And I can see you at lunch with us: you and Swami warming to each other; and you enjoying the curry, which is good.
I have a feeling I must know Hsiao Chi’en. Believe he wrote to me once, from Cambridge. And, oddly enough, Eardly-Wilmot is the name of one of my Mother’s greatest friends. She was the wife of a brother-officer of my Father’s, who was killed in the last war. Hazel is a relative, maybe? This one was Mildred, and she had two very attractive children, now grown-up, Anthony and Joan.
Gerald is down at Laguna Beach. Very busy with religious groups and gatherings. Haven’t seen him in a long time. Aldous is finishing his novel in the desert at their little ranch. Willie Maugham wrote an affectionate letter from New York. He has just published a drug-store anthology of modern literature, not bad, but a few inclusions almost unbelievable, and I didn’t agree with his remarks about you. Lincoln Kirstein and Pete Martinez are both in the army. Pete, you know, is co-author of the Mexican novel I like so much. He and Swami would probably be your favorite people in the U.S.
Well, goodbye for now. Do keep writing often, and I will too.
Love as always from
Christopher
And to Bob too, much.
* * *
West Hackhurst—Abinger Hammer—Dorking
23-10-43
Dearest Christopher,
The enclosed it is hoped will reach you about Christmas. You were spoken of with love. It was a party given by Bob and me in my flat to Leo and Tom whom I extricated for a couple of days from Dover. I don’t think they had been to London since the war started. Joe put up Tom at Putney and I had Leo. The only other person was Margery Wilson, the sister of John Simpson’s idiot, and as she did not know you she has not signed. Bob suddenly looking at the door said “if only Christopher would walk in . . . . ” We are all changing, and it is not always true that a:b::a+x:b–y, but it is oftener truer of people than of ciphers. Thank goodness. The party was a big and grand one for these days. A ham in a tin, which an American lady sent me three years ago because she thought genius was starving, was opened, and found not to be bad. May made manes [?] of cheese straws, Bob potato salad, and we drank real sherry, unreal burgundy, and one bottle of champagne.
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I understand your ritual and drag easily. The universe is very odd, and we do not recognise this enough. I do not understand your feeling that God will help you—i.e. I don’t ever feel that I shall ever be thus helped myself. When I was so upset about Bob’s being taken from me, I seemed to get through it all alone—first behaving as an Englishman should, then breaking down, and then behaving as a human being. That last stage ended when he was rejected on account of his eyes, and now I really don’t know how I behave. Perhaps you will write more to me about this “trust-in-God”